


Normal Is What You Get Used To

by veronamay



Category: Stuck On You (2003)
Genre: F/M, Internal Monologue, M/M, Multi, Twincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-01-16
Updated: 2005-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-27 06:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veronamay/pseuds/veronamay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><a href="http://lydia-petze.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://lydia-petze.livejournal.com/"></a><b>lydia_petze</b> is a fabulous beta.  I'm scared to make a move without her say-so.  ;-)</p>
    </blockquote>





	Normal Is What You Get Used To

**Author's Note:**

> [](http://lydia-petze.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://lydia-petze.livejournal.com/)**lydia_petze** is a fabulous beta. I'm scared to make a move without her say-so. ;-)

_Promise me you’ll be here when I wake up_ , he’d said, and Walt had promised. Except that was the whole point right there, wasn’t it? They’d done it so that Walt _wouldn’t_ be there when Bob woke up; now May was there instead, and that was how things were supposed to be now that he was normal.

The only problem was, it didn’t _feel_ normal. It felt weird. He couldn’t get used to any of it. Couldn’t, even from day one when they woke up in separate beds. He’d had a panic attack, of course, but this time there had been no Walt to lean against while he quietly freaked out and that made it ten times worse, even though he could see Walt in the bed not five feet away. _Seeing_ Walt, seeing his whole face and body with his own eyes instead of through a mirror or in a photo – that was the first in a long string of things that scared Bob half to death. The tingly tender skin on his left side was another; the lack of warmth and solidity at his side a third. How did people live like this? And how was he supposed to stand it after thirty years of never for a single moment being on his own?

He didn’t say any of this to Walt. There was no point; it couldn’t be undone, after all, and besides Walt seemed perfectly happy with the way things worked out. He went back to work as soon as he got his walk straightened out and didn’t seem to miss Bob at all. So Bob went to May and stayed there. No time like the present, right? Walt had said it: he had to stand on his own two feet. Which was fine, Bob thought, just fine. Except, how could he stand on his own two feet when he kept falling over?

It wasn’t all bad. He did have May, and that was great. That was the best part of the whole deal. Walt was never shy about approaching women, but Bob had always been too conscious of the freak-out factor – his, not theirs. So he was maybe a little lacking in the bedroom department, but May didn’t seem to mind. In fact, May kept him pretty much exhausted for the first three days when he went to her apartment. Bob walked funny for a while after that. And the best thing was, he and May really did hit it off. It wasn’t long before they were making plans about that dream house with the yard for their dogs and May was dropping not-very-veiled hints about loving snow in the winter.

The hard part was telling Walt they were going. Bob tried to be normal about it, but he could feel the panic lurking around the corner of every word he spoke. He could finally see a sign that Walt maybe wasn’t handling things so well either at that point, but by then their plans were fixed and there was no going back. It was a short conversation.

Bob thought things would get better when he got home. Everyone welcomed him back, and they all loved May, but it was still weird. He saw Walt in everything and it was a constant shock to look over his shoulder and see nobody there. He’d start to say something and expect a reply, then look up and discover he was alone in the room. Things started to fall apart quicker than he could hold them together because he only had two hands now, and that wasn’t enough. May tried to help, but he couldn’t even tell her what was wrong. It was as simple and complicated as this: he missed Walt. May was his wife, but Walt was, literally, his other half, and nothing worked without him.

Sometimes the nights were the worst. During the day there was always the option of believing they _chose_ to spend every waking moment together. And really, on Bob’s part that hadn’t been much of a problem, because when Walt wasn’t being the most annoying brother on the planet, he was the coolest person Bob knew. But now that they were separated, it was the nights that bothered him the most. Sometimes he lay there beside May and wondered if part of all this wasn’t that he just didn’t know how to sleep alone. He hated the thought, hated that he might be using May like that, but the small part of him that wondered wouldn’t quit it. And maybe that small part was right, because he had gone from sharing a bed with Walt all his life to two weeks in a hospital bed and then straight to May’s bed after that, and if you looked at it in a certain way it was kind of hinky. Bob was sure that he loved May, though, so he figured everything was even on that ground anyway. It was just – there it was again – weird. He’d never shared a bed with anyone other than Walt. Even on the few occasions he’d scored, they had always gone to her place and he had never stayed the night. Part of that was embarrassment on Bob’s part whether he liked to think of it or not; but when he thought about it afterward, it was embarrassment because he didn’t want the girls he slept with to know how he slept with Walt.

Of course, there was no chance for them to hide it when May found them out. Or him, rather, because Walt never wanted to lie to her in the first place. She hadn’t been the first to make the guess she did, and there were others who thought worse – worse because those others knew they were conjoined. Walt always shrugged it off and Bob never wanted to talk about it. There was always a line there, possibly the only line they had between them. They’d never, ever crossed it – until May left him.

There hadn’t been much to it. Walt was asleep, and he’d pulled May’s photo out from under his pillow. Only with the angle it was too hard: to get the pace he wanted, to hold the photo, to keep things going without waking Walt. Then there was a sigh of frustration in the dark and another hand came into play. That was possibly the freakiest thing ever in Bob’s life; freaky because it _wasn’t_ weird, it was absolutely fine, and thirty seconds later he shuddered and melted back against Walt’s shoulder and fell asleep like they did this every night.

Walt never said a word about it directly. Bob didn’t know _what_ to say, so he kept his mouth shut. But then Walt started in about the operation and their happiness – their separate happiness – and the paint-shaker jibe caught him right in the gut. Everything after that was like a huge fucking neon sign to Bob, telling him to _get out now_ while he still had his head on straight. Mostly straight. So he gave in, and thought maybe it was for the best.

And now here he was, cleaning up the kitchen because his staff were running away from him to watch the _squid boats_ come in, for Christ’s sake, like that was a huge event. And again he could feel that phantom sense that fooled him so often, that he could turn his head and see Walt standing there, just to the left and behind. And for the millionth time since he woke up alone in a hospital bed – _on the wrong side, Walt was on the wrong side_ , he remembered – Bob felt like half a person. Maybe it was pathetic, maybe he was drowning in self-pity and he should get a grip and grow up; but he wanted his brother, damn it, and if that was queer then so be it.

Out in the restaurant, the jukebox came to life.


End file.
